


free to find my calling

by Papook



Series: Jocasta Jones and the Librarian Clones [5]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Culture Shock, Dealing with the fallout of being raised on Kamino, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Jedi Culture Celebrated, LIIL Squad, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Star Wars AU - Soft Wars, clone culture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-13 19:01:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 18,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29158557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Papook/pseuds/Papook
Summary: Freshly reassigned from dismal circumstances on Kamino to the Jedi Archives and the care of Madame Nu, LIIL Squad must learn to navigate their new life.
Relationships: Jocasta Nu & LIIL Squad
Series: Jocasta Jones and the Librarian Clones [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1951591
Comments: 143
Kudos: 224
Collections: Open Source Soft Wars





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time, I thought I would write this little series of funny one shots about librarian clones. 
> 
> And then all the characters mutinied and ambushed me with this monster of a story. -_-
> 
> I have regrets, gentle reader, I really do. But Jo and the boys have none.
> 
> (This story begins immediately after [(Fact) Finders, (Knowledge) Keepers](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27149912/chapters/66303140))
> 
> ***** 
> 
> (Ever and always thanks to [PrimaryBufferPanel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArwenLune) for the editing help, and to [Project0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506) for creating the glorious [Soft Wars](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1683775%22url%22) universe in which I am happily splashing)

After their whirlwind tour of the Archives, Madame Nu led them to their berthing. It was two sets of rooms located side by side in the same quiet hallway as her own quarters, connected to each other by an interior door. Each set had a fresher, three bedrooms, and a combined living and kitchen area with a holoterminal in one corner. It was an absurd amount of space for five people used to living within arms reach of hundreds of other bodies at all times. Madame Nu apologized for the lack of amenities, which Eight-One slowly gathered meant that there weren’t all the cooking gear she deemed necessary for civilized life—not that any of them had any experience with cooking or where to even begin learning. 

The windows were huge things that looked out into an enclosed garden on the other side of the wall. The boundary between the living area and the garden seemed ephemeral, due to the thick array of potted plants covering the windowsill. It was bizarre to see actual plants, to be able to run a cautious finger over velvety leaves and pliant stems, to feel the yielding firmness of a clump of moss, to breathe the rich foreign tang of soil. 

Sunlight streamed through the windows. Somehow, that was the strangest detail of this whole strange new place.

In theory, Eight-One knew what sunlight was. He’d seen it in the training sims, knew how to adjust for the hazards caused by it, be it blinding glare or excessive heat. He even knew, hypothetically, how to deal with a sunburn. He’d even seen it on a training mission once, but that Manda-forsaken moon had been a frozen wasteland perpetually overshadowed by the bulk of its parent planet—the days were brief, the nights long, and the weak sunlight did nothing to warm anyone.

He hadn’t known that sunlight could feel like the physical weight of a caress on bare skin.

Eight-One was jarred out of his perusal of the windows by Madame Nu handing out datacards. The cards were keyed to both sets of rooms, as well as her own, and all the public rooms in the Temple. Apparently the datacards they would need for access to the Archive systems wouldn’t be ready until the next morning. 

“I have to leave for a moment, but I’ll be back in an hour to show you to the refectory for dinner. There are snacks in the cupboards and the conservator if you get hungry before then,” Madame Nu said, and excused herself.

She left them all hovering uncertainly in the living area of one of the suites. Three-Five sat gingerly on one of the sofas, then sprawled out more when it proved sturdy and comfortable. He looked up at the rest of them, standing around like idiots, and said blankly, “What the actual kark.”

Yeah. That about summed it up.

Six days ago, they were all reporting to an ominously bland room in Tipoca City, waiting to be sent off to die. Now they were in a place they couldn’t have imagined in their wildest dreams, and their new CO was apologizing— _apologizing!_ —because there were not enough spices and oddly specific pots in the kitchen. Eight-One felt like he was suffering emotional whiplash.

“So, how do we divide up the rooms?” Seven-Oh asked hesitantly.

“I guess we just each pick one?” Eight-Five hazarded, and went to look more closely at a bedroom. The rest of them slowly drifted after Eight-Five. Eight-One detoured to the fresher, but had to pause a moment on the threshold to blink at the luxury. The shower stall was tiled in an intricate pattern of blues and greens. There wasn’t even a sonic set up, just water, and no regulators or timers to govern usage. Towels, thick and soft and a warm gold color, hung on pegs on the wall, and matching woven mats lay on the floor. Sturdy cabinets held more towels, an array of soaps, neatly packaged hygiene kits, odds and ends that Eight-One didn’t recognize. 

There was a large mirror above the sink, set in a frame made of tile that matched the shower. The sink looked like it had been carved from a single solid block of creamy stone, buffed slick as blaster oil. There was a subtle spiral carved into the basin; when he turned the tap on, the water followed the lines of the spiral in hypnotizing loops before it swirled down the drain. 

_Why would anyone waste the effort to carve something so frivolous into something that should be functional?_ he wondered. It was...interesting, and pretty, he supposed, but...he didn’t understand the point of it. All he knew was that it made his chest ache for some reason when he watched the water spiral around the basin and ran a careful finger over the mirror frame.

He tried to shake off the strange feeling as he peered into the bedroom where the rest of his new squad had gone. It held a freestanding bed, with crisp sheets and three colorful blankets, along with a mound of pillows. There were shelves on each wall, half full of datapads, and even more potted plants in a dizzying array of greens and blues and purples lined the windowsill. A desk and a tall cabinet stood in opposite corners.

Three-Five was sprawled on the bed, arms and legs going every direction, while Oh-Nine sat on the edge in a clear space and cautiously poked a pillow. Eight-Five sat in the desk chair, and Seven-Oh perched nervously near the edge of the desk. Everyone had varying degrees of bewilderment on their faces.

“What the hell are we supposed to do now?” Eight-Five finally asked.

Oh-Nine shrugged. No one else said anything. 

“Scout,” Eight-One offered. He didn’t mean to say anything else, but every one of his new brothers looked at him like he was holding out the only lifeline they could see. “Treat it like a scouting sim, yeah? It’s unfamiliar territory, but we’re trained for that. Observe, catalog, report. Just—this time we’re not looking for hostiles or terrain hazards.”

“What are we looking for?” Three-Five propped himself up on one elbow.

Eight-One thought for a moment. “Rules and regs,” he said, slowly sorting through what might be important. “Resources we can make use of. General lay of the land. Threats,” he finished with a grimace, “if we can recognize them.”

There was a murmur of agreement and some of the tension leeched out of the room.

“Pool our observations at the end of the shift?” Eight-Five suggested, and Eight-One nodded.

"Kamino didn't want us," he said quietly. "But the Jedi do. Maybe we can find out why."

*****

Jocasta had spent the hour since she dropped her new charges off at their quarters making hurried comm calls and scribbling notes to herself. She had done her best to follow the will of the Force in bringing the clones here, but unfortunately, the Force wasn’t concerned with mundanities like making sure they had nightclothes and a well-stocked conservator. Nor had the Force been all that helpful in coming up with a cohesive training plan for them. She _needed_ them trained, common sense told her that, and that was the one thing the Force was also insistent on, but how she was to go about it—no help at all was forthcoming.

It had to be a custom plan, there was no getting around that. Every other librarian she had trained had been Temple-raised, and generally familiar with the Archives from childhood. There was a massive difference between a Temple raised Jedi and clone soldiers plucked from the executioner’s grasp, and Jocasta was under no illusions that she knew even a quarter of what separated them. She would simply have to find out what she didn’t know as she went along, and hope that she didn’t misstep in some irreparable way. She rubbed at her temples to stave off the oncoming headache. This wasn’t her forte: she had trained two Padawans, yes, and routinely taught classes, but again, there was shared culture to create lines of communication and understanding. She would have to build those bridges from scratch with her new charges. 

Most of the journey to Kamino to pick them up had been spent in cobbling together a training plan, but it was still a very rough draft. She had a slightly better idea of some, but by no means all, of their strengths and weaknesses after the return journey, but there were so many gaps in her knowledge that six days in stilted conversation and close quarters hadn’t begun to fill. Part of the problem was that they were still very reserved, with good reason, given the circumstances they had come from. Part of it was the cultural divide. She would just have to adjust as things came up, and hope for the best.

Stars above, she hoped this would work. Shaak had told her a little more about what she had learned about the army the Jedi now commanded at the behest of the Republic. It was entirely possible that, if someone on the new Military Oversight Committee decided it was needful, her new librarians would be remanded back to the army. Unless she could provide incontrovertible evidence that they were already providing a vital service to the war effort, they would be thrown into the fray as nothing more than cannon fodder, especially given their records as troublemakers already. 

She couldn’t bear for that to happen, not to anybody, but especially not to those five boys who had looked at her with such fragile hope. So she needed to train them, and train them quickly, on more than just the skills necessary to an Archivist. She needed to make them irreplaceable, to make them something that no one could afford to throw away.

She dashed off another few ideas on her pad, and punched in Cin’s comm code. She would need a great deal of help for this to succeed.

*****

The door chimed. The squad had spent the rest of their allotted hour thoroughly exploring their new lodgings, getting familiar with base camp, as Eight-One had suggested. The other set of rooms was equally as luxurious as the first, though the decorations were a little different, and that one had an entire tree growing in a pot in the corner of the living space. It was a small tree, just about head height, but still—a tree. Inside the room. 

Eight-One was beginning to think the Jedi were a little bit strange.

Oh-Nine opened the door and Madame Nu stepped into the room. She glanced around the room—ever so slightly disarranged from their explorations—and smiled briefly at the squad. “If you would all be so kind as to follow me, we can go to the refectory for latemeal.” They nodded and followed her out into the hallway. 

She led them briskly through a confusing array of corridors, none of which were clearly marked. The Temple had none of the order of Kamino; short flights of stairs appeared at random, doorways were spaced unevenly, smooth plastered walls gave way to cut stone and intricate brickwork. And yet it somehow gave an impression of great _centeredness_ , of a harmony within itself that was unruffled by such trivialities as conflicting décor. 

_I live here now_ , Eight-One thought, and felt such a strong surge of unreality that he missed a step on the latest random staircase. Oh-Nine, once again bringing up the rear, caught his arm and cocked a worried eyebrow. Eight-One shook his head, and tucked the thought away to examine later. 

They arrived at the refectory a few minutes later. Eight-One once again strongly wished for a map. It would take a while to learn the lay of the land here, although at least there were distinctive landmarks, as it were. 

The refectory was a large room, but much more welcoming than the mess halls of Kamino. They must have gotten there a little early for the meal, as it wasn't crowded at all. It held a mix of different seating areas and kinds of tables; some were low to the ground, surrounded by cushions, while others were of a more familiar height and had benches or stools. There was a group of tables near the far wall that were nearly head-height—one was occupied by a silver-furred Wookie and a tiny child of indeterminate species who could barely see over the edge of the table, despite the mound of cushions it perched on.

Madame Nu walked them over to the serving area along one wall. They each took a clean tray and a plate from a stack and followed her over to a dizzying array of food. She pointed to a sign on the wall and said, “Pay attention to the symbol on the labels. Some things are easily consumed by multiple species, but some are strictly not for human consumption. Please ask if you have questions; the healers will have my hide if something is mislabeled and you accidentally try it.”

Eight-One checked the sign—there were four symbols that signified items for human or near-human diets—and looked at the food laid out on trays. There was a whole wall of cold foods, a table of hot food in steam trays, and cases and cases of things he had no name for. It was a little overwhelming.

“How do you know if you’re eating an optimized meal?” Seven-Oh ventured timidly.

Madame Nu paused in spooning something runny and orange over a heap of fluffy white stuff and quirked a smile. “In my opinion, a meal is optimized if it tastes good and makes you happy. A balanced diet is a cookie in each hand, after all.” She replaced the ladle in the runny orange thing and scooped up some colorful cubes. “If you want, we can consult with the healers tomorrow about a diet plan. But for tonight, I think you should be free to sample whatever you wish.”

Free to sample anything. No rules, no regs, no carefully regimented portions of protein powder and green veggie glop. Unreality swelled and threatened to swallow him again. Eight-One closed his eyes and focused on his hands, just for a moment. The tray was smooth under his fingers, with beveled edges that pressed into the meat of his thumb. He squeezed it a little harder, grounding himself in the sensation until reality steadied again.

He opened his eyes. Most of the squad was following Madame Nu’s example, choosing the same foods that she had for themselves. Eight-Five was poking at a tray full of something blue and jiggly with morbid fascination. Eight-One took his time looking at the labels, checking the symbols and trying to decipher whether the contents of the dish had any relation to the food he was used to. 

The fluffy white stuff Madame Nu had chosen—apparently it was _steamed rice—_ seemed like a good place to start. He put a careful spoonful on his plate, surprised to discover it was actually a whole bunch of tiny ovoids sticking together instead of a continuous mass like he had thought. He looked at the orange sauce, but as he was trying to decide whether he wanted to try it, a serving droid trundled past him and set down a tray full of brown slabs that were still sizzling like rain on a hot blaster barrel and smelled _divine._

He hadn’t known food could smell so good it made his mouth water.

He quickly added two slabs of the brown thing to his plate. _Nerf steak,_ the label said. He knew what a nerf was, he’d seen holos, but he had no idea what ‘steak’ was, and he had no idea if the nerf on his plate had any connection to the animal in the holos. 

He chose the rest of his food—some orange _gazar_ cubes, green _nangu_ semicircles, and shreds of something translucent and purple called _sokh_ —by how good it smelled, and finished the plate off with a cup of red sauce that burned his nose when he sniffed it. He’d heard Mandalorians liked spicy food; he wasn’t sure if it was genetic or not, but the sauce was very appealing.

He joined his squad and Madame Nu at a circular table of normal height. A slow trickle of beings had begun drifting into the refectory, casting curious looks at their group, but Madame Nu ignored the looks, so Eight-One did his best to follow her example. 

“Alright, gentleman,” Madame Nu said as Eight-One took a cautious bite of the white fluff. “The next few days are going to be quite busy, for which I apologize. We have a good deal of mundanities to get squared away before we can proceed to more interesting things.” She pulled a datapad out of a pocket somewhere in her voluminous robe and consulted it while Eight-One tried an orange cube. It was a little sweet, a little savory, a little crunchy. Definite win. “Tonight after the meal we will need to visit the quartermaster to collect your clothes and the things that were not adequately stocked in your rooms.” Eight-One ate a green semicircle—very tasty— and a bite of the purple _sokh_ (interesting texture, softer than expected). 

“Tomorrow,” Madame Nu continued, “I have arranged for the battlemaster to assess your combat training, so that we can create an accurate plan to continue honing your skills.” Eight-One wasn’t sure what to think of that. On the journey to Coruscant, Madame Nu had briefly outlined what their duties might entail, and had mentioned that although the Temple was obviously not a combat posting equal to the front lines, it was not unreasonable to expect to see combat regardless. He had gotten the impression there was a lot she wasn’t telling them about that subject; whether she had something specific in mind and was holding it back, or whether she didn’t know about the likelihood of the fighting reaching the Core, he wasn’t sure. Coruscant was in the heart of the Republic; the thought of the war penetrating this far was just depressing.

To distract himself, he cut a bite of the nerf steak and popped it in his mouth.

… _Prime's bones_ , nerf steak was the best thing he had tasted in his _life_.

*****

After they finished in the refectory, Madame Nu took them to the quartermaster. Instead of the endless rows of armor and gear the quartermasters of Kamino presided over, they were led to a small but comfortable anteroom where a droid assistant took full body scans of each of them. That seemed somewhat redundant; they were clones, after all. 

Madame Nu introduced them to the quartermaster, a Gand with purple-brown skin and an intricately embossed breathing mask, who blinked his huge silvery eyes several times before quickly herding them through a different door and into the most bewildering storeroom of Eight-One’s short life. He couldn’t name more than a quarter of the things on the neatly ordered shelves, nor could he parse their function. 

The quartermaster consulted a datapad, paying no attention to their astonishment, and scuttled briskly to a section of shelves that held folded piles of fabric. He tapped the control pad and the shelves rotated smoothly down, bringing the items near the ceiling into easy reach. “These should be in your sizes, goodsirs. Please choose enough items to fill out a standard kit. If you require more, add it to the inventory request.”

Eight-One glanced at his squadmates. They didn’t have any idea what a standard kit was either.

Madame Nu stepped smoothly forward and produced a list on a datapad. The standard kit was apparently clothes for ten days, plus accessories, sleepwear, and formal robes. “I think we’ll skip the formal robes for now,” Madame Nu said, a touch dryly. “But everything else would be useful.”

A porter droid trundled over carrying a stack of empty crates. His squadmates each took a crate; the droid beeped politely for each crate removed, but didn’t move away, though Eight-One doubted they would need more than one crate apiece.

He had to revise that thought as he looked through the shelves to fill his crate. There were _so many_ pieces of clothing, in a wide array of colors and textures and fabrics. It was like the clothing version of the food in the refectory, except he couldn’t decide on his selections based on how appetizing they smelled. Pity, that; it would have been easier than trying to choose ten shirts he liked from the bewildering multitude on offer.

“If you don’t like something you choose now, you can exchange it at a later date,” Madame Nu remarked as she watched the slow way he and his brothers were poking at the shelves. That...helped, somewhat, Eight-One supposed.

“Indeed,” the quartermaster hummed. “Anything you find that is not to your liking, send it back via the laundry droid with a note on what you would prefer as a replacement.” He reached out and tapped a stack of pants. “These may be more to your liking. That style is much better suited for beings who have no thigh muscles to speak of,” he told Eight-Five, who was frowning at a pile of leggings. 

“Um, what is this?” Three-Five asked uncertainly, holding up a tiny scrap of fabric. 

Madame Nu looked over at him and visibly suppressed a smile. “Underwear,” she said gravely, the humor hovering around her eyes nowhere in her voice. 

Three-Five gave the supposed underwear a dubious look. “How is this underwear? It wouldn’t cover _anything_.” 

“Some people prefer that style,” Madame Nu responded. 

“Why?” Three-Five blurted, aghast, and her eyes crinkled like she was trying hard not to laugh.

“Maybe you should try some and see,” Oh-Nine suggested innocently.

“How about _no_ ,” Three-Five retorted, pointedly putting the underwear back on the shelf.

Eight-One snickered and turned back to the shirts. He slowly sifted through them, marveling at how different the fabrics all felt in his hands, wondering what they were made of. To his mild bemusement he found himself gravitating towards shades of blue as he chose his new clothing. The rest of his squad picked out a wider range of colors than his predominantly blue selections. Three-Five had a veritable rainbow. 

Eventually they were all loaded down with three crates each, full of more kinds of clothes than he had ever seen before. Sleeping clothes, jackets, a sash, an abundance of socks—Madame had added an armful more than what the standard kit called for to everyone’s crates, because apparently socks slowly disappeared no matter how closely you kept track of them and even the Jedi had no solution to the problem. Once everyone had filled their crates and the quartermaster keyed in the codes that would assign the contents of the crates to each person in the inventory system, he brought a hoverpad over and began loading the crates onto it.

“Your uniforms will be delivered in a few days, when they are done being fabricated,” the quartermaster said offhand as he worked, as if it was of no consequence. Uniforms. Eight-One was so off-kilter from the utter _newness_ of everything around him that he didn’t even know how to feel about the prospect of having a uniform again. On the one hand, he was used to wearing a uniform, had been doing it every day of his life that he could remember. On the other hand, he was quickly coming around to the idea of his clothes expressing his individuality, now that the ordeal of choosing the clothes was over.

He wondered what the uniform would be like. A version of Jedi robes, maybe, since the squad was going to be working in the Temple? But the Jedi didn’t really _have_ a uniform look, not from what he had seen so far. There was sort of the same general _idea_ of robes, but even within that idea there was a great deal of customization, and the variations didn’t even seem to run along species lines.

The Jedi were nothing like the rumors had led him to expect.

The quartermaster finished loading all the crates on a hoverpad, then led the way out of the storeroom. There was another hoverpad with several more crates waiting in the room, and Madame Nu took both tethers. She bowed to the quartermaster. “Thank you, Master Diion. Your expertise is, as always, invaluable.”

The quartermaster buzzed a laugh. “Flattery will get you nowhere, Madame. I know you’re trying to soften me up for pazaak night, and it won’t work.”

Madame Nu flashed a grin at him, wide and brimming with mischief. It was startling, how much younger she suddenly looked. Eight-One was not good at judging ages of anyone older than him, but he thought Madame Nu was probably at least middle aged for a human, though he wouldn’t dare to guess an actual year. But with that smile—she looked like she could be of an age with him and his _vode_.

“Hope springs eternal,” she said, and the quartermaster laughed again.

“Out out out,” he said playfully, flicking his clawed hands at them.

The group wound their way back through confusing halls to their berthing ( _map_ , Eight-One yearned despairingly), and Eight-One wasn't the only one trying not to droop. It had been a _long_ day, and immensely full of change. He felt like he'd stopped processing _anything_ about three hallways ago.

Madame Nu brought them to their door and helped them guide the hoverpads inside. They unloaded the crates quickly, then sent the hoverpads back out the door.

Madame paused on the threshold as she was leaving. "I will come get you tomorrow morning before firstmeal, and we will discuss the day's schedule at that time," she said, surveying everyone. Her bearing softened, gentled, and the smile she graced them with was small but warm. "Get some rest, gentlemen. I know that today was difficult, but you have all handled it admirably. I am proud of you."

Then she was gone, leaving startled glances and rising warmth in her wake.

In silence, they unpacked the crates. It was one more strangeness to add to the day’s count that they each had several crates full of their own clothing, things they had chosen, things that weren’t uniforms. The crates full of things that were not clothes were left by the door by unspoken agreement. No one had the wherewithal to deal with them tonight. 

Eight-One took his crate back to his bedroom. It was beyond weird to think that he had an entire room to himself, weird and a little unsettling. The silence pressed all around him—even the noises the rest of the squad made were muffled by carpets and curtains and blankets, utterly unlike the acoustics of Tipoca City. He changed into his sleeping clothes quickly and went back out to the living area.

He was the first to sit on the couch, but his brothers quickly gathered and chose seats on the furniture. “Report?” Three-Five suggested, a bit muffled by the colorful blanket he had swathed himself in. He looked like a rainbow-colored ration bar.

“Didn’t get much of a feel for any rules or regs,” Eight-Five said thoughtfully after a long moment. “At least, nothing solid that I could use to say ‘do this’ or ‘don’t do that.’”

Eight-One grimaced. That was true enough. Really, the only _rule_ they had been told was ‘don’t eat the non-human food’. 

“Maybe we could ask Madame Nu?” Three-Five suggested. He tugged a fold of his blanket away from his mouth. “She's been good about answering questions so far.” He sounded cautiously hopeful. 

He was right, too. Madame Nu had spent the entire six day flight from Kamino either piloting, sleeping, or answering their questions. None of them had asked many the first day, still shellshocked by the day's events, but as the trip progressed they had all become a little bolder. Not once had Madame Nu acted like she found a question anything but welcome. 

She hadn’t seemed to be a very expressive person; her somewhat stern, upright bearing hadn’t changed much during the trip. Not that she was unkind—she never seemed angry or annoyed or unhappy with him or his brothers, no matter what they had asked, or how confused they were when she was explaining what they might expect from their future duties in the Archives. She wasn’t at all like any of the trainers he knew on Kamino. She had just been...reserved, he thought, especially compared to how she had acted with the quartermaster. 

It slowly dawned on him that she might have been feeling as out of her depth as they were about the whole situation, and now that she was back on familiar ground, back in her home, she was relaxing. 

But even when she had been anxious or uncomfortable, she had been kind to them. Not overly solicitous, but...patient, informative, and welcoming of any interaction with them. Not autocratic, not arrogant, not tyrannical.

Just...kind.

“I think that’s a good idea,” Eight-One said quietly, and the rest of them nodded. He looked at his squadmates, and saw in their faces the same thing he felt: battered, exhausted, fragile hope. 

*****

Seven-Oh sighed miserably. He was exhausted, weary down to his bones, but he couldn't sleep, even though he was trying so hard to follow Madame Nu's order, even though this bed was the softest thing he had ever laid on.

But he was trying to sleep alone for only the second time in his life, alone in a room without his brothers, and he couldn't do it. Not when the memory of the first night—the night all his squadmates had been sent away, and he had curled in his bunk, miserable and alone, knowing with certainty that he was going to die in the morning—threatened to strangle him every time he closed his eyes. He hadn't died. He was here, _alive_ , far from the decommissioning labs of Kamino. But it was hard to remember that in the dark and the silence. The fear still clutched him, made the past day seem like a bewildering dream and his nightmares seem like reality.

Seven-Oh didn't want to go back to Kamino. He never wanted to go back to Kamino, never wanted to go anywhere _near_ Kamino ever again. Six days removed from it and he still felt the choking panic of waiting in that room to be decommissioned whenever he thought about Kamino. The Jedi Temple was arguably a thousand times better, the way they were fed and housed and clothed was the height of luxury, no one had sent him off to be killed or yelled at him or even _looked_ at him unkindly, and yet— 

At least he had known what to expect on Kamino. Here, there was only overwhelming uncertainty. He couldn't predict anything, not the rules, not what was expected of him, not how anyone would react. He couldn't even identify his food, no matter how good it tasted. He didn't even have the words to ask about what he didn't know! All the unspoken rules and communication and culture he used to rely on to navigate his life had been erased and replaced with an entirely different code that he didn't have the key to decrypt, and he had no idea where or when or even if he would ever understand enough to _try_ , much less succeed.

And his squadmates— Seven-Oh flinched. His _new_ squadmates. Still strangers, for all they shared the same face. They were just as lost as he was. None of them knew anything about this new life they had been dumped into. There were no other _vode_ to ask, nobody who knew answers that they could pass along on the sly. Just the five of them, dropped into a completely foreign culture with nothing but each other. 

He couldn't do this. He had to move, had to remind himself of what was real. 

Seven-Oh crept out of bed, still half certain that doing so was forbidden, that he would be caught and punished, but he _had_ to move. He carefully slipped out of the door, intending to go to the fresher—because at least it was a valid excuse for being out of bed—when he saw light pooling on the floor of the living room. He peered around the corner of the hall.

A brother was sitting on the couch, head in his hands, misery in every line of his body. Seven-Oh's chest clenched. He wished he was less familiar with that pose, but he knew it intimately. He crept over to the couch and settled next to the brother, close enough to feel his warmth but not quite touching. 

“Hey.” Seven-Oh didn’t ask if he was ok. That was karking obvious. He just tried to let the brother—he couldn’t tell who it was in the dim light—know he was there. That he wasn’t alone.

“Couldn’t sleep?” the _vod_ said hoarsely. _Oh-Nine_ , Seven-Oh thought, hearing his voice.

“Too quiet,” Seven-Oh said, pulled a knee up to his chest and curled around it. 

“Yeah,” Oh-Nine breathed, rough. There was a world of pain in that simple word.

Seven-Oh considered the pain, the fear that ran underneath it, and gambled. “Who’d you lose?”

Oh-Nine huffed a laugh devoid of humor. “I don’t know.” His hands curved around the back of his neck, laced together, and he curled into himself further. “ _I don’t know._ It wasn’t—I never expected that _I_ would be the one sent away.”

Seven-Oh didn’t say anything. Just shifted a little sideways, leaned a little closer, so their sides touched, their knees knocked. So he was there, and present, and hopefully more immediate than the grief Oh-Nine was drowning in.

A shudder ran through Oh-Nine; something in him seemed to break. The night air was sharp and jagged in Seven-Oh’s lungs. Oh-Nine had been the steadiest of them today, firm and watchful, taking everything in stride in a way that seemed effortless. It ached to see him curled around a bleeding wound that no bacta could touch.

“My squad—” Oh-Nine’s voice cracked. “They have blue eyes. All three of them.”

_Three_ , Seven-Oh thought with creeping horror. _Three, where there should have been four._

Three visibly different clones, already down a squad member, and with the only brown-eyed one of the bunch sent away. Sent away, Seven-Oh remembered, because Oh-Nine put himself between bullies and those blue-eyed squadmates. Which meant that their protector was gone. 

Seven-Oh’s squad had been broken up, but for everyone except him it was for specialist training. That was no guarantee they would survive the war, but at least they were more likely to _make_ it to the war, instead of dying on Kamino because they had a cosmetic mutation.

No wonder Oh-Nine was so afraid.

There was nothing Seven-Oh could do to help Oh-Nine’s squadmates; he wasn’t on Kamino. Not that Seven-Oh had been able to do much to help anyone on Kamino regardless. But somehow the vast gulf of space between the heart of the Republic and the Outer Rim made his helplessness feel even more heavy. 

He couldn’t help Oh-Nine’s squad. All he could do was try to help Oh-Nine.

“Wanna bunk in my room? It’s not much, but you won’t be alone,” Seven-Oh offered quietly.

Oh-Nine shrugged. Not in negation, Seven-Oh thought, but despair. Seven-Oh placed a careful hand on Oh-Nine’s shoulder and squeezed. “C’mon. Let’s go lay down.”

“Can I come too?” Seven-Oh looked up to see Eight-Five standing in the doorway, looking as exhausted and awful as Seven-Oh felt.

Seven-Oh looked at Oh-Nine, but didn’t get any response, so he nodded. “Sure.”

“Thanks,” Eight-Five breathed out, rubbing his face.

“Should we get the others?” Seven-Oh said, half joking, but Eight-Five nodded.

“Good idea. I’ll go check if they’re awake.” He slipped next door to the other set of rooms.

They were going to need more room if it was all five of them. “We should get some more blankets if everyone’s bunking together,” Seven-Oh said. 

Oh-Nine slowly uncurled. He still looked like death, but he wasn’t hunched over himself anymore, so Seven-Oh was going to count that as a win. He drew Oh-Nine up and gently herded him into a bedroom. Seven-Oh grabbed a blanket, then paused and said, “You know, we might as well just grab the mattresses too.”

Oh-Nine shook himself like he was surfacing from deep water and nodded. By the time Eight-Five arrived with the other two, everyone loaded down with pillows and blankets, Oh-Nine and Seven-Oh had pushed all three mattresses together on the floor of the biggest bedroom, nearly filling the space. With five pairs of hands they quickly had a nest set up. 

Oh-Nine made a move like he was going to lay down closest to the door, but Seven-Oh was having none of that. The last thing Oh-Nine needed was to spend all night on guard. Seven-Oh snagged the back of Oh-Nine’s sleep shirt and pulled him back towards the middle of the nest. When Oh-Nine resisted, Seven-Oh clasped his forearm and tugged him into Keldabe. 

“We’re in the Jedi Temple,” Seven-Oh said quietly. “Right now, we are the safest _vode_ in the galaxy. Let someone else guard for once.” 

Oh-Nine wavered, exhausted habit warring with sense, then ducked his head in acquiescence and threw himself down in the middle of the mattresses. The rest arranged themselves around Oh-Nine, with Eight-Five taking the edge by the door. Seven-Oh curled up next to Oh-Nine, hand still curled around Oh-Nine’s forearm. Just before Seven-Oh dropped off to sleep, finally soothed by the sound and feeling of brothers around him, he felt Oh-Nine squeeze his hand, and he smiled.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> CW for someone getting their blood drawn in this chapter, just in case that's troubling for you!

Jo led the way from the refectory to the Halls of Healing. Her charges were all wearing dark pants and shirts in varying shades of blue, though she wasn’t exactly sure _why_ ; she’d watched them pick out clothes in other colors. They were as much a swirling bundle of emotions this morning as they were yesterday, although the flavor of the miasma had shifted just a little. She wasn’t sure what caused it, even as she wryly added meditation to the ever growing mental list of things she needed to teach them. 

Currently, the strongest thing she sensed from them was apprehension. She had discussed the day’s schedule with them over firstmeal, including the need for a medical examination, which had caused them all some distress. They hadn’t outright said anything, but she got the impression from the tension in their faces and their buried alarm that medical exams on Kamino were…upsetting. Unfortunately it couldn’t be avoided; the most she could do to ease their way was to request that Vokara Che conduct the examinations herself. There was no one more skilled at putting a patient at ease, whether by empathic projection or sheer competence alone. 

The apprehension from the men grew thicker and became threaded through with real fear the closer they got to the Halls of Healing. Jo felt unequal to the situation; again, there wasn’t much she could _do_. All the reassuring words in the galaxy would not be proof against their past experiences, not when they were so new to this massive life change. She was not unaware that they had been violently uprooted from everything they had ever known and transplanted into a place and culture that were completely foreign. In time, she believed that they would become comfortable here, would grow and blossom if provided the opportunity, but for now, everything was still unsettling at the least and downright terrifying at the most.

They reached the entrance to the Halls, and the fear surged viciously. The doors opened— 

—and the fear emanating from the men lessened under a tide of surprise and amusement as a tangle of younglings tumbled out the door, shouting and laughing. One of the Initiate clans had just finished their checkups, judging by the stickers displayed proudly on tunics and hands and foreheads. Crechemaster Rhyyyl gave Jo’s group a harried smile and quick bow before exasperatedly corralling her charges into a somewhat cohesive blob, rather than the shrieking avalanche down the corridor the clan was attempting. For Rhyyyl's sake, Jo hoped they shed some energy on the trip back to the creche.

The men paused to watch the younglings go, a bit of wonder twining through the group. Jo carefully laid a hand on Seven-Oh’s forearm, as he was closest. He twitched at the unexpected contact and turned to look at her, eyes wide. “The Halls of Healing bear very little resemblance to whatever passed for the medical section on Kamino,” she said quietly. “Their purpose is to help those who enter towards healing, nothing else.”

Seven-Oh looked at her uncertainly, but nodded after a moment. He didn’t feel very sure, in the Force, but that would come with time and experience. She had faith.

Vokara was waiting for them in front of the central desk. Jo smiled in relief and bowed. “Gentlemen, may I introduce Master Healer Vokara Che. She will be conducting your appointments today.”

The men didn’t quite seem to know how they should react. Hands twitched as if they had moved to salute and then suppressed the instinct. Eight-One was the first, after an awkward moment, to offer a clumsy bow and a murmured, “Master Che.” The rest raggedly followed suit, and Jo made yet another entry on her mental list. _Greeting customs, with particular emphasis on bows._

“Welcome to the Halls of Healing, gentlemen,” Vokara said, looking them over with a practiced eye and exuding an air of calm so strong that even Jo felt herself relax a little. “If you’ll follow me, we can get started.”

They walked to a smaller waiting room in the humanoid well-patient area. Vokara waved them all to a seat as she checked her datapad. “Who would like to go first?”

The tension that had eased under her projected calm spiked savagely. Jo controlled her flinch, and her concern, and looked to her charges. They had frozen, every one, and fear edged their expressions. “What’s wrong?”

Eight-Five was the one to swallow and answer. “We have to go alone?” he said, in the smallest voice she had heard from one of them yet.

Jo opened her mouth but Vokara cut her off. “Certainly not,” she said calmly, as if that had been the plan all along. “You may all come at once, as long as you don’t mind the lack of privacy during the appointment.”

The clawing panic Jo could feel beating on her shields receded somewhat. Apparently being solo for a medical examination was _much_ worse than simply having one at all. She took care to fix that little fact in her memory. Eight-Five nodded firmly and followed Vokara as she led the way to a different exam room, one in the section of the Halls meant for larger beings such as wookies. The men filed into the room Vokara chose, and Jo turned to look for a seat to wait in.

Oh-Nine, last of the group as usual, paused in the doorway and looked back at her. “Are you coming?”

She blinked, caught off guard. “Do you want me to?”

He glanced at his brothers, who were all looking at her, then nodded. “Please.”

Bemused, she followed him into the room, trying to parse the feelings she was reading off of her charges. They were still rife with apprehension and fear, plus panic that was suppressed but not gone, but which receded further as she entered the room and settled herself in the most out of the way corner she could. The faintest wisp of comfort from her presence curled through the harsher emotions, a tiny drop of _security-lifeline-protector_ that made her eyes suddenly sting. 

It had been _seven days_. Seven _paltry_ days since she had met these young men, and yet they already trusted her enough that her presence was a comfort. Was an indicator of _safety_. 

She swore to herself then that she would do everything she could to continue to deserve that trust, to be that place of safety for them. To give them a place of shelter and safe harbor, of love. To give them a _home_.

Jo folded her hands and composed herself. If they thought of her as a source of comfort and stability and safety, she would do her best to be so. Empathetic projection was not her strongest talent, but she was not a Jedi Master for nothing. Although she could not project the same kind of calm as Vokara, she could and did project centeredness, the feeling of two feet immovably planted on solid ground. The tension in the room eased further; not gone, but subsumed by more even feelings.

Vokara leaned against the counter as the men found various perches around the room. “Here’s the plan: since we have no records about your medical history here in the Halls, I’ll need to give each of you a basic physical examination, along with drawing blood for analysis. If I find things that need further attention we’ll go from there, alright?”

The men looked...startled, to be included in the discussion about their own health, and it made something in Jo’s chest hurt. She was becoming very familiar with the feeling. Cautiously, the men nodded, and Vokara spent a few moments typing on her datapad before assembling her instruments. She turned on the scanner and let it run through a few diagnostics, then nodded at what she saw on the readout and turned back to the men.

“I’ll do a full body scan, to get a baseline reading on your general health and any current problems, and then I’d like to check you over physically and with the Force. Who would like to go first?” Vokara asked.

“I will,” Three-Five said after a moment, raising his hand. He still felt wary to Jo’s senses, but there was also a bright thread of curiosity curling through him. Three-Five, more than any of the others thus far, was openly curious about this strange new life. All of her charges tended to keep a wary eye on everything going on around them, but Three-Five was the one who was losing that wary edge the fastest, who had a budding desire to participate instead of merely observe.

“Excellent,” Vokara said, projecting pleasure. Three-Five brightened perceptibly under her warm regard. “May I ask your name?”

He immediately wilted at the question. “I...don’t have a name yet,” he said, looking away, shame curling around his edges.

Vokara didn’t visibly react, though Jo could feel the spike of appalled anger she released to the Force. “What would you like me to call you?”

“Three-Five,” he answered quietly. The rest of the men were emanating the same sort of shame and defiance, looking away from Vokara. This was a sensitive topic for them, clearly. Jo hoped she could glean enough understanding quickly enough that she wouldn’t misstep and cause them distress. 

“Thank you, Three-Five,” Vokara said. Three-Five looked up, apparently shocked by her thanks.

Vokara did him the courtesy of ignoring his shock and briskly moved on with the exam. “If you would be so kind as to take off your boots and lay down flat on the bed— “

He did as directed and she pulled the scanner arm into position above him. “We’ll just give this a moment to do its job, and then we can have a look at the results.” The scanner beeped in completion and Vokara absently helped Three-Five sit up. The look of startled confusion on his face was both funny and heartbreaking. Jo couldn’t tell if he was confused by the courtesy, or because Vokara was used to manhandling zabraks and wookies and thus lifted him with no visible effort. 

Vokara picked up her datapad and angled the display so that Three-Five could see. “So, according to the scanner, no current injuries are detected aside from some healing bruises, all your internal organs are undamaged and fully functional, and you have an old but healed break in your right forearm. Do you have any decrease of mobility in your right hand or wrist? Any tingling or loss of feeling?” Three-Five shook his head. “Good. If any of that happens, let me know, and we’ll discuss what we can do to treat it.”

Explaining all the while, she then checked his eyes, ears, throat, and involuntary reflexes by hand. His squadmates watched with rapt attention, and all of them slowly relaxed the longer the exam progressed with nothing untoward happening. There were even some stifled chuckles when Vokara checking his reflexes produced involuntary twitching, and Jo suppressed her own smile. 

“Alright, the last thing we’re going to do is a quick check with the Force. You probably won’t feel anything; I’m just looking for things that might not have been picked up by the scanner, and problems that might arise in the near future.” Vokara extended her hands, palms up, and Three-Five placed his palms hesitantly over hers. 

A mental probe tapped lightly on Jo’s shields. She caught the offered link, opening a bit of herself to Vokara’s presence so that she would also be able to sense what Vokara’s examination revealed. It was standard procedure for using the Force to examine a youngling, initiate, or padawan under a master’s care; the impressions gleaned by the Force examination were invaluable for addressing mental health, and depending on the examining healer’s talent for precognition, could sometimes uncover diseases or health problems that were just taking root. Master Inga had been warned of the formation of a dangerous blood clot from an exam like this one; forewarned, the Healers had managed to eradicate it in its earliest stages. 

Jo could tell that Vokara sensed nothing that needed to be addressed in the physical realm, no twinges of maladies to come, but precognition was not one of Vokara’s strengths—she was chief healer for a multitude of reasons, but one was that she excelled at grounding herself in and dealing with the problems of the here and now without getting overwhelmed by possibilities that didn't yet exist.

However, the complications that needed to be addressed in the emotional and mental realms were an _entirely_ different story.

Like this, Three-Five’s emotions were clearer than ever: curiosity that was half sincere, half bravado; weariness and nerves; tamped down fear; a desperate focus on the comfort of familiar presences. There were a few bright flickers of hope, but none of trust. Underlying it all was a wary tension that spoke of unwillingness to let his guard down lest he be caught unawares by something terrible. It was not simply the tension inherent in facing an unknown situation: it had the weight of bitter experience behind it. 

In fact, Three-Five’s mental presence was horrifyingly similar to that of a Shadow fresh off a long term mission embedded in hostile territory. It was plain that life on Kamino had been viciously cruel to this young man. 

Vokara folded herself away, outwardly revealing nothing, and Jo schooled herself to calmness. There was nothing she could do to change the past. All she could do was address the present and the future. This anger was impotent and helped no one, so she acknowledged it, and its source, and poured it out into the ceaseless ocean of the Force. 

The rest of the mens’ exams went similarly. The scanner revealed healed breaks in Eight-Five and Oh-Nine—Eight-Five had broken his collarbone, while Oh-Nine had _several_ old breaks—and the hands-on exam proved they were all in possession of excellent reflexes. The Force exams were uniformly troubling. After the first, Jo had brought out her datapad to transfer her mental list of to-do items onto an actual list, as it was growing with alarming rapidity, and the necessary actions were proliferating across multiple categories. 

The last item she added to her list was to get ahold of one of the creche learning modules on food. After Vokara had finished explaining the results of everyone’s exams and had moved on to advice on how to keep themselves healthy, she had been met with blank looks when she mentioned a ‘balanced diet.’ A bit of gentle prodding yielded a quiet explanation that the men had previously been fed on strictly regimented rations, none of which bore any resemblance to the food they had been derived from. They didn’t know how to differentiate a starch from a vegetable or a protein, and they had no context to help them puzzle it out. Jo resolved to teach them how to cook at the earliest opportunity, and to provide much more guidance in the refectory in the meantime.

As Jo updated her list, there was a knock at the door. Vokara opened it, revealing a young Nautolan who smiled and said, "Hi Master Che!"

"Padawan Lephara, hello. Are you the phlebotomy assistant today?"

"Yep!" the girl said cheerfully, short orange lek tresses bouncing as she nodded. “I brought the human kit.” She held up a case and Vokara directed her to put it on the counter and get set up.

“Senior Padawan Lephara will be doing the blood draw under my supervision, if that’s alright with you,” Vokara said to the men. “With your permission, she will also be practicing Force healing on the puncture site.”

“You can heal with the Force?” Seven-Oh asked, fascinated. He craned his neck to see what Padawan Lephara was doing, as if he expected her to be using Force healing on the sterilized needles she was laying out on the counter. 

Vokara smiled. “Yes, with patience and practice and the right mindset.”

Lephara stepped back from the counter and Vokara moved forward to check her preparations. “Can I go first?” Seven-Oh asked Lephara. 

Jo had a sudden, jarring flash of memory of the first time she saw Seven-Oh as he walked toward her on the refueling station where she had picked him and his squadmates up from Shaak. The bright-eyed, engaged young man in front of her asking to be the first to undergo a medical procedure was starkly different from the quiet, tearstained wraith of a cadet soldier she had met that day. He so clearly had far to go toward true healing of the trauma of his past, but his improvement was already remarkable.

“Sure!” Lephara grinned. “Just come sit over here and I’ll get you prepped.”

Seven-Oh sat down and Lephara arranged him to her liking, narrating all the while. She was young, but her hands were deft and sure as she inserted the needle and filled a small vial. She handed it to Vokara with one hand as she kept pressure on the gauze in the crook of Seven-Oh’ elbow with the other. “Ok, can I use Force healing to seal this off?”

Seven-Oh nodded eagerly, staring at the gauze. Lephara didn’t look; she closed her eyes, focusing, and the tips of her lek tresses curled in concentration. Jo felt the subtle movement in the currents of the Force as Lephara drew on them to close the puncture wound and soothe away any bruising. It only took a few seconds, and Jo was impressed by the padawan’s control. 

Lephara opened her eyes and lifted the gauze. “All done!” 

“That’s it?” Seven-Oh asked, lifting his arm to his face and staring into his elbow. “All I felt was a little bit of itching.” He looked a bit put out about that, and Jo stifled a smile. 

“Force healing doesn’t really _feel_ like anything,” Padawan Lephara explained as she threw away the gauze and changed her gloves. “We use the Force to encourage the body to do what it would naturally, just faster. That’s why it itched. Itching means things are healing.”

“Huh.” Seven-Oh’ arm was so close to his face that he was almost going cross-eyed. One of his brothers snorted a poorly concealed laugh, and Jo saw Vokara bite down on a smile of her own. 

Lephara didn’t bother to hide her grin as she turned to the rest of her patients and asked, “Who’s next?”

*****

After all the exams and tests were over, Vokara asked the men to wait in the room for a moment while she took care of a few administrative things before sending them on their way. At Vokara’s look, Jo followed her out of the exam room and into her office.

Vokara shut the door and dropped into her desk chair with a thump. Jo settled more sedately in one of the visitor’s chairs. “This is appalling,” Vokara said bluntly. Jo agreed. “I have to set up medical files for them with _designations_ ,” Vokara continued with distaste. “And everything I observed about your new charges makes me want to momentarily forget my healer’s vows in regards to the Kaminoans.”

“Get in line,” Jo muttered, and Vokara snorted and turned to her datapad. “We’ll have to fight Shaak to get there first.”

“I’m adding visits to the mindhealers to my prescriptions for them,” Vokara said as she flicked through her notes. “I’ll send you a diet plan that you can pass on once they have a better grasp of what food is; please help them at least get enough calories in the meantime, they all have a higher than baseline-Human metabolism. I don’t _think_ they have any food allergies, but I’ll let you know when the blood analyses are done.” She glared at her datapad for a moment. “It would be very helpful if we could get their previous medical records—then I wouldn’t have to rely so much on guesswork.”

“I’ll ask Shaak if she can get them, but I don’t have a lot of hope that it will be possible. The Kaminoans have been...recalcitrant,” Jo said.

Vokara grimaced, then shook her head, clearly setting the topic aside, and said, "I'm also enrolling your new charges in the next sex ed course available."

Jo did not do a double take. Outwardly, at least. "Excuse me, what?"

Vokara’s glower lightened and she flicked a lekku at Jo in amusement. "Really, Jo? The five of them are fighting fit young human males who will be working in the prime spot to interact with every Padawan in the entire temple. _Someone_ is going to try and seduce one or all of them within a week. They'd better know the pertinent facts before that happens."

  
Jo expressed what she thought of _that_ with a zabrak expletive she’d learned from Agen that made Vokara snort with undignified laughter.


	3. Chapter 3

Eight-Five was _really_ glad when they finally finished up in the Halls of Healing. It had been an incomparably better experience than any of the medical visits on Kamino, but he was still wound tight from all the stress.

He wasn’t sure their next destination was better, though. They were on their way to the training salles for an assessment by the battlemaster. He was pretty sure that it wasn’t going to be like combat assessments on Kamino, given that nothing in the Temple so far had been like anything on Kamino—but that also meant he had no idea what to expect, and that made him a little nervous. _Different_ didn’t always mean _better_ , after all.

Madame Nu directed them into a locker room, with instructions to change into the provided practice clothes, then ushered them into a huge room with vaulted ceilings. Half of the room was empty, while the rest was a tangle of walls and ropes and platforms, which he _assumed_ was an obstacle course, but for all he knew it was where the Jedi learned how to turn invisible. An older Human man with long blond hair was standing by a long shelf covered with a mildly bewildering variety of weapons that ran the length of one of the walls on the empty side of the room.

“Gentlemen, this is Master Cin Drallig, the Temple Battlemaster. He is the Order’s premier combat specialist and teacher,” Madame Nu said.

“Master Nu asked me to look you over and give her an opinion on your skills,” Master Drallig said with a shrewd look. “I’ll be running you through the assessment we give to all the Jedi who choose the Guardian path, to make sure their skills are satisfactory before they are knighted. This isn’t a test that you can fail,” he continued firmly. “The only consequence that will come of any sort of mistake is that I will be able to understand how to best put together a plan to address your needs in later training. You will not be punished in any way for what happens during this assessment, is that clear?”

“Yessir,” Eight-Five said automatically, in concert with his squad. It was _clear_ , but it was also completely unexpected, and made him feel off kilter. More off kilter. Eight-Five hadn’t felt sure of his ground since leaving Kamino, trying to adjust to so many changes in rapid succession.

"Good. Come over here and tell me what you're familiar with, and what your proficiency is with each weapon."

The blasters on the shelf weren't quite the same make as the ones they had trained with on Kamino, but they were similar enough that Eight-Five felt he could use them without much trouble. Vibroblades were basically the same everywhere, as were staffs. There were a bunch of things that he didn't recognize, didn't have any names for, but that he itched to try anyway. 

He and his squadmates reported on what weapons they could use, and the battlemaster nodded. Eight-Five couldn't get a read on him. He seemed completely stonefaced, even more than any of the trainers on Kamino, who weren't exactly known for having such useless things as _emotions_.

“Very well. We’ll begin with ranged weapons, then melee, and then hand to hand,” the battlemaster instructed. “Choose your blasters, I’ll set the targets up.” He walked over to a control panel in the wall while Eight-Five and the rest picked their blasters. 

Madame Nu settled herself next to the door, unobtrusive but keenly attentive. Eight-Five kept half an eye on her and the battlemaster while he checked his blaster over with the ease of habit. It was...odd, that the presence of a superior was a relief instead of something to worry about. It pricked at him, caught like a callus on cloth, subtly there even when he tried to put it out of his mind.

“Proceed as you would for a regular qualification exam,” the battlemaster called from his place by the control panel. Five targets slid up out of the floor at the other end of the room. The squad spaced themselves out and took their stances. 

Eight-five breathed. In, out— 

_raise-sight-fire_

—in, out— 

_fire-fire-fire_

The sound of blasterfire echoed back at him, a strange overlapping chorus with breaks where he expected continuous noise. Somehow, it was that more than anything that rammed home the fact that it was just him and four brothers here, just a tiny handful of clones in a sea of otherness. 

That was the root of his unease, the reason he couldn’t quite seem to get his footing back no matter how hard he tried: it was just them here. Just this squad, thrown far across the galaxy from the rest of their kind. They were alone in ways he’d never experienced before, never had the context to even truly _imagine_. He knew, intellectually, that war meant that the clones would be scattered out across the galaxy, but he hadn’t felt the reality that there were no brothers just on the other side of the walls sink in. Not until now.

His body went through the sequence for a range qual exam on autopilot. The squad all finished within seconds of each other, echoes ringing quickly to silence. There was no automatic display of how he had done, however, no accuracy stats or time spent. It was such a little thing, but so jarringly different from Kamino. 

He didn’t know how much more of this he could stand before he lost his footing completely.

“Well done,” the battlemaster said. Eight-Five nearly twitched and lost his grip on the blaster, but suppressed it at the last second. _Well done?_ How could he tell without a readout? Maybe through the Force _woo-woo_ Jedi were supposed to have, but— 

It didn’t matter, Eight-Five told himself. He was just—surprised, that’s all. Surprised that a trainer would choose to praise them over something so simple. 

He refused to think about why it felt wrong, why it hurt.

He kept not thinking about it while Master Drallig had them demonstrate their proficiencies with vibroblades, with a staff, and in hand to hand. He didn’t think about it when Master Drallig set them to running the obstacle course that filled the other half of the room (but that was mostly because all of his attention was focused on not losing his breakfast). He was pleased that his guess about the purpose of the obstacles was correct, but also... _concerned_ , because if this was the _standard_ Jedi training they were all as utterly _insane_ as the course. _Nothing_ he had encountered on Kamino was this grueling. 

By the time the battlemaster called a halt, Eight-Five was staggering, and the rest of the squad weren’t fairing much better. Well, except for Oh-Nine, who was inexplicably still going strong. Eight-Five hated him for a minute. Just a little. 

Master Drallig looked them over as they straggled back to where he was standing. “Very well done,” he said, once again throwing Eight-Five for a loop, and after guiding them through a cooldown routine, directed them to the showers. 

“How are you still standing,” Three-Five demanded of Oh-Nine as they all hobbled toward the door. “Literally how.”

Oh-Nine shrugged a shoulder, not quite hiding the flash of heartache that crossed his face. “My squad was slated for the Marines.”

_Osik._ That would do it. No wonder he wasn’t dead on his feet. This was probably a lovely little romp for a Marine-in-training.

Three-Five winced, just barely. After last night they all knew that Oh-Nine's cadet squad was a tender spot, with good reason. 

"Did you ever fight _The Marine?"_ Seven-Oh asked, eyes sadly knowing but smile sly. "Was he good? How long did you last?"

"Longer than you're going to," Oh-Nine said, and lunged, the unexpected movement jarring Eight-Five further out of his funk. Seven-Oh tried his best to avoid the headlock, but some things were inevitable and Oh-Nine was apparently one of them. 

Oh-Nine hauled his squawking, flailing armful through the door. Eight-Five followed, laughing freely for the first time since leaving Kamino.

*****

"What do you think, Cin?" Jo asked quietly when the men had all left for the showers.

Cin frowned, thoughtful, and tapped a hole-filled target. "There's potential, I think. They’ve certainly got the physical skills for it. We'll have to dig a bit and see if there are independent thinkers under the indoctrination, but…" She watched his eyes flick back and forth over each set of holes—not the absolute most precise groupings she'd seen, but definitely on the higher end of that scale. "If it works out, I think you can make the argument for Special Operations. Doubly so if you go through with the extra training you considered."

A knot of tension unspooled from her shoulders as worry eased, somewhat abated for the moment. "Good." Being designated a Special Operations team would be a boon to her trainees. They would be less likely to be separated, and less likely to be ordered away from her 'command'. It wasn't the _safest_ thing in the galaxy, especially if it turned out they could accompany her on her expeditions, but it would be secure. She trusted in her own ability to keep them safe when combined with their skills. She couldn't protect them if they were taken away from her.

She objected to this war on principle, as a Jedi, as one of the beings that had devoted her life to being a peacekeeper. She objected to it more strongly on a personal level than she probably ought to, given her lifelong association with Dooku, and that was something she was attempting to work through.

But now she found herself objecting on a much more visceral level, something instinctive and hot rising in her chest at the thought of sending the bright young men in her care off to the slaughter of war. They were already starting to bloom, to unfold from the guarded beings they had been when she first saw them walking toward her with Shaak. It would be a joy and a privilege to be able to see the heights they might reach, if only they had time and space and a good environment to do so. She found she could not bear the thought of that potential being cut short. Not now, when it had so recently begun to flourish. 

Not ever, not when she still had breath and strength left to lend. 

A calloused hand gripped hers. “They’ll be alright, Jo,” Cin said gruffly. “We won’t settle for anything less.”

She turned her hand and squeezed back in silent thanks. “No, we will not,” she said, and straightened her spine. The Force wanted these men here, the Force urged that they be trained, and she believed in the hope that that offered for the future. 

She was a Jedi. She would do her utmost, and have faith.

*****

After they had all showered and changed back into their new clothes, Madame Nu led them back through the confusing warren of the Temple and to a hallway that Three-Five vaguely recognized as near their quarters. He half expected her to take them to their quarters, but then she turned down a hallway they had passed before but never explored and walked down a flight of wide shallow stairs, out a door, and into a riot of greenery.

Finding plants inside their quarters had been a shock. This was that same shock, scaled up to the size of the trees that spread overhead. The air on Kamino had always smelled of water, something he hadn’t noticed until his first off-planet training on a desert world. The jolt of stepping off the transport and smelling dust instead of the ever present rain had branded itself into Three-Five’s memory. Walking into the garden felt similar, but instead of acrid dust, the air was green and sweet with the unfamiliar scents of plants. He instinctively took a deep breath, savoring the feel of the clean air in his lungs.

A porter droid that had been waiting just inside the door, laden with white boxes, whistled a greeting at them. “Excellent timing,” Madame Nu said, shaking the helper arm it extended. “Come along, we won’t go far.”

After a minute or two of walking along one of the garden paths that wound aimlessly through the greenery, Madame Nu led them onto a large patch of grass ringed by trees and bushes. She settled onto the shady ground at the base of a tree, tucking her skirts neatly around herself. "Come, sit," she said, patting the ground. The squad settled a little warily onto the grass. Three-Five was briefly distracted by the slick prickly feel of it on his palms, the rustle as he sat. The droid passed each of them a large, heavy box that smelled heavenly, and stacked five more next to the tree Madame Nu was leaning against.

“Thank you, TA-54,” Madame Nu said gravely. It beeped cheerfully at them and departed with a wave of one helper arm. She opened her box, so Three-Five followed suit. It was full of food, though nothing he recognized from the mess hall. That was simultaneously exciting and depressing. Before coming to the Temple he had had no idea there were this many different edible things in the galaxy. He itched to try them all, to learn what they were and where they were from, what they tasted like, who had discovered they were edible, _everything_. But at the same time, it was overwhelming, and a little part of him—the part that was feeling ground down and exhausted from too many new things all at once—wished a bit wistfully for the known quantity that rations represented. 

Before he could find his utensils, Madame Nu held up a hand. Everyone snapped to attention as well as they could while sitting on the grass. She looked briefly sad, though he didn’t understand why. “Gentlemen, may I speak freely for a moment?” she asked quietly.

That was the absolute last thing Three-Five expected to hear from a natborn superior officer. It was so odd that for a moment it didn’t compute. Why would an SO care about how they spoke to a bunch of clones? When he parsed the meaning he couldn’t help but glance at his squad in bewilderment. They looked equally confused, but Eight-One slowly nodded and the rest followed suit.

“Thank you,” Madame Nu said. She looked at each of them a moment longer, then said bluntly, “I think that how you were treated on Kamino is appalling. I know practically nothing of your training or your history, but what little I do know is enough to make me want to forcibly remove every single one of your fellows from that planet. I can’t, I know I can’t, and I hate that.”

Three-Five couldn’t believe what he was hearing, but Madame Nu was still speaking and gave him no time to process his shock. “I know that your lives have been rearranged, that you had no choice in the matter, and that everything here is new and strange and possibly frightening—but I hope it will be a good change, and I find I am overwhelmingly grateful that you five are no longer on Kamino and no longer have to endure that terrible place.

I wish I could promise that you would be safe here forever. That the war would never touch us. But that would be a lie, and I am not going to lie to you. There is very little I can promise you with surety, and I will not do you the disservice of making false promises. But I _can_ promise that I will hold your lives equal in value to my own, and I will do everything in my power to give you the chance to live your lives to the fullest.

“My hope is that we can work together, not as superior and subordinates, but as student and teacher in turn.” Her serious mien softened somewhat. “So please, I hope you will feel free to come to me with any questions, concerns, or problems, no matter what they are—and also tell me to kark off if needed.”

The startled laugh punched out of him entirely without his consent. Three-Five almost cringed, almost braced for repercussions—but Madame Nu grinned at him, wide and pleased, and he couldn’t help but smile back.

She meant it. She _meant_ it when she said that she was happy they were here, that they weren’t on Kamino, and that she wanted them to _talk_ to her. As unexpected as it was, she _meant it._

The atmosphere in the garden slowly edged from reflexive fear to something closer to ease—more like the dorms on Kamino, but without the constant worry about getting found out and the need to keep watch for surprise inspections. Three-Five breathed in, deliberately relaxed his shoulders, shored up his daring and leaned into the feeling. “Alright, Madame, first question: what in the galaxy is _this?”_

He speared a tan sphere with his fork and brandished it at her. She chuckled. “It’s _harore_ , a vegetable native to Chandrila, that has been coated in batter and then fried in oil.”

Three-Five examined it closely before biting into it. The coating broke with a crackle and the vegetable inside was rich and a little sweet. He quickly ate the rest of it.

“What’s this one?” Eight-Five asked, holding up a red slice of something.

“Raw _jabolko_ , from Shili,” Madame said.

They passed the rest of the meal learning the names and origins of their food. It was—Three-Five didn’t know the right word, but it twisted a little, right under his sternum. There was so much _out there_ , so much of the galaxy to learn about. Even just learning the names of vegetables—learning what vegetables _were_ —fed a hunger that he hadn’t realized existed, a yearning for things that he had never had a name for. 

When Three-Five finished his box of food he set it to the side, mimicking Madame. She gave him a look he couldn’t interpret and passed him a box from the stack off to the side, then handed the rest to his brothers. He nearly dropped the box when he opened it to find even _more_ food, hot and still steaming. “Madame, this—”

“This is on Master Healer Che’s orders,” Madame said with a quelling look. “You all burned a great many calories this morning, and you need to replenish them. You may be _able_ to get by with a lower calorie load, but that doesn’t mean it is _healthy_. Eat until you are satisfied, please. Otherwise Vokara will come for my head.”

“She is pretty strong,” Three-Five joked weakly, trying to deflect the confusing mix of feelings rising up his throat.

“The woman wrestles wookies in her spare time, _strong_ is perhaps not the word I would use,” Madame grumbled. Eight-Five huffed a laugh and looked surprised that he had done so.

It didn’t take very long to polish off the contents of the second box. It was...odd, almost jarring, to feel _satisfied_ as well as full.

“We'll have to get back to training soon, I’m afraid, but we still have an hour until then,” Madame said when they had all finished eating. “It is high time we had a bit of a break. You may use the time however you wish—explore, nap, laze about, get stuck in trees, it doesn't matter. Personally, I am going to attempt to catch up on some reading. We’ll meet back here in an hour." She pulled a datapad out of her pocket and flicked it at them with a small smile. “Go on, shoo. Enjoy your break.”

Even after all the revelations of the last few days—the last few _hours_ —Three-Five was a little shocked by Madame’s instructions. He’d never had a CO let him off leash and just...tell him to do whatever, with no mandates or objectives. He didn’t know what to do with that at _all_ , and his squadmates looked equally taken aback.

Madame caught the confused glances flicking between them, and her smile dropped into something softer and sadder, but she didn’t say anything. She just turned her attention to her datapad and let them sort themselves out.

Eight-Five was the first to move, rolling to his feet and walking off down a path. Seven-Oh quickly followed him. Eight-One seemed content to sit and stare up at the artificial sky. Oh-Nine ran his fingers back and forth through the grass, brow furrowed in silent contemplation.

Three-Five found himself relaxing. It was quiet in the garden, peaceful. Serene. There was a little artificial breeze that rustled the leaves of the trees, and he didn't know how the Jedi managed to get or simulate sunlight this far into the Temple, but it made the plants glow beautifully. He felt his muscles unspool and grow languid as the calm and sunshine settled over him. He shifted, stretched out on his stomach with his head on his hands. The sunlight lay warm and heavy on his shoulders, his back, his legs, drugging him with pleasure. _Safe_ , it sang, _peace, rest._

He tried to keep an eye on the others, to see what they were doing, but he was so tired from everything that had happened in the last tenday, Madame was still here watching over them, and the grass was cool beneath his palms.

He slept.

*****

“Well, today sure was...something.” Eight-Five was sprawled out on the couch for the nightly debrief. Eight-One perched in a chair, Three-Five was starfished on the rug between the couches, and Seven-Oh had hug-tackled Oh-Nine onto the other couch and apparently had no intention of relaxing his grip any time in the next decade. Oh-Nine bore the full body hug with resigned patience.

“And what did we learn from that ‘something’?” Three-Five asked the ceiling, semi-rhetorically. Eight-Five batted a pillow off the couch onto Three-Five’s face and smiled at the muffled yelp.

“That the galaxy has too many karking ways to say _hello_ ,” Seven-Oh groaned. Eight-Five was impressed that he was even halfway understandable with his face smashed into Oh-Nine’s back like that. Seven-Oh was right, though. They’d spent the afternoon learning about different greeting modes and customs and forms of address, both for Jedi and civilians. Madame Nu had also tried to give them some guidelines on visual and behavioral cues that would help them differentiate between the different Jedi ranks, but while the delineations for Jedi cadets were fairly straightforward—basically tubies, Littles, and new cadets—the separation between Knights and Masters was aggravatingly vague.

(Madame Nu had admitted as much, too, which made Eight-Five feel better about the whole thing. “Just ask if you aren’t sure,” she had advised. “If they get snippy about the question, they’re brand new knights. Any Master who finds an innocent question about their rank that irritating doesn’t deserve the title.”)

“Any more rules or regs?” Eight-One said.

“Don’t tease Oh-Nine if you’re within his reach,” Eight-Five said promptly. Three-Five launched the throw pillow back into his face as Oh-Nine snorted. 

“Serves him right,” he said, and leaned back, smashing Seven-Oh further into the couch cushions. Seven-Oh squawked indignantly and wriggled until he had some breathing room, though he didn’t let go of Oh-Nine.

“What do you think about what Madame Nu said in the garden?” Eight-One asked. The joking atmosphere died an abrupt and forceful death.

What did Eight-Five think about what Madame Nu had said? The cynical part of him, the part that had been nothing but collateral damage in someone else’s dejarik matches too many times, thought it was a load of crap. It just—it was so hard to believe that someone in a position of power would willingly _give that up_ and humble themselves to learn from their inferiors. It wasn’t an attitude he saw much, if ever, on Kamino, and even then only from _vode_. Never from a trainer. 

But the rest of him, the part that took notice of how he and the rest had been treated since coming to the Temple—since leaving Kamino, really—couldn’t help but tally up the differences already apparent: the food, the quarters, the beds, the clothes, the karking visit to the med labs and how fast Master Che had adjusted the parameters of the exams, every time they were encouraged to ask questions and explore this new life. All of it added up to a very different picture than people with a god complex would allow.

Three-Five sighed and sat up, breaking the tense silence. “She meant it,” he said, unusually serious, devoid of the sheen of confidence he usually projected. “She meant every word. I dunno about the rest of the Jedi, but—” he shrugged. “Madame Nu is on our side, sure as storms.”

“Master Che is too,” Eight-One said, and Eight-Five had to agree. The medic had treated them totally differently than the non-vode medics on Kamino, even taking into account that she was a Twi’lek and not a med droid. Every explanation she gave, every bit of information she had shared, made it clear that she, at least, considered them people and not products.

“What about the battlemaster?” Oh-Nine asked. His face was studiously neutral, and Eight-Five wasn’t sure what was going on in his head. 

Eight-Five propped himself up on an elbow so he could see the rest of the squad better. “He’s more stoic than the Kaminiise, so it’s hard to say. But if nothing else, I think he’s on Madame Nu’s side.”

“So two firm friendlies, one neutral, and no known hostiles,” Three-Five summarized. He snorted, wry. “Quite a step up from Kamino.”

“Yeah, no one’s tried to kill us yet,” Eight-Five said blandly.

“Except the obstacle course,” Three-Five said with determined lightness, glancing sidelong at Oh-Nine.

“That’s because you’re all dainty little tubelings,” Oh-Nine sniffed.

“Oi! I am not a tubie!” Seven-Oh jerked like he was trying to wrestle Oh-Nine to the bottom of their two-vod pile. Oh-Nine just tsked at his efforts and smoothly squished Seven-Oh back into the couch.

“Gerroff me you karking lartie!” Seven-Oh wheezed, and just like that the tension was gone.

Eight-Five flopped back and smiled. He still felt pretty lost, confused by this new life he found himself in, but he wasn’t alone. He still had brothers. They’d be okay.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Extra thanks go to PBP for working extra hard to save me and this chapter from pedantry. It was a difficult task XD

Eight-One followed Madame Nu into the Archive study room she had reserved to begin their first training session on their journey to become librarians—whatever those were. He didn’t actually know, now that he thought about it. But! Whatever it was, it was sure to be more interesting than being a grunt in the GAR, which was the only place he’d been headed before. And it meant he got to be in the Archives, which was honestly the best thing that had ever happened to him. 

He was a little confused when he saw the study room, though. Medium sized room, light grey walls, deep blue carpet, and containing nothing but a dozen large blobs of fabric in various colors. He had been expecting a classroom like on Kamino, full of individual terminals and workstations and headsets. This was definitely not the same. 

At some point he assumed he was going to stop being baffled by how the Jedi did things, but today was apparently not that day.

Madame Nu grabbed one of the fabric blobs and dragged it closer to the middle of the room. “Choose a beanbag and form a circle, please,” she said as she settled herself on top of the blob. Eight-One picked a blue-green ‘beanbag’ and scooted it over to her right. It was extremely squishy to sit on, practically swallowing him, and there was no good way to sit at attention so he ended up more or less lounging. It made him feel odd, but Madame Nu seemed to find nothing out of the ordinary with his posture, although she was sitting upright with enviable ease.

The squad settled down on the beanbags, all of them in various failed attempts at vertical and a little bit uncomfortable with it. Not that the beanbags were uncomfortable—but this was nothing like they expected a training class to be. 

“Before we get into the technicalities of your training, I need to find out exactly how much you do and do not know,” Madame Nu said, folding her hands in her lap and looking around the circle. “To whit: what do you know about librarians? What do you know about their purpose and how they function?”

Eight-One traded glances with the rest. Yep, all in the same lartie. No one wanted to answer because no one _had_ an answer, and none of them wanted to risk giving the _wrong_ answer. That lead nowhere good.

Madame Nu watched them glance at each other and seemed to read the trepidation in their faces. Eight-One caught a flash of sadness before her expression smoothed back to calm. “There is no right or wrong answer, gentlemen,” she said gently. “This isn’t a test, and even if it were, you couldn’t fail it. I’m simply trying to understand what _you_ understand, so that I can make sure to cover all the relevant information during your training.” Her lips quirked in a tiny, wry smile. “Consider it a scouting mission on my part.”

Hearing it put like that made Eight-One relax. No test, just scouting. That, he could handle. “None of us know what a librarian is, sir,” he said apologetically. 

She smiled at him, a real smile, and try as he might he couldn’t keep from ducking his head in pleased embarrassment. “Then we’ll begin there.” She opened her mouth to continue, then paused. “No, wait, we need to back up a bit. First, what do you know about _libraries?”_

“They’re...data collections, right?” Seven-Oh hesitantly ventured. “Some of the Kaminiise called the edu-sim collection ‘the library’.”

“Yes, in the broadest sense of the word, libraries are collections of data. In a more specific sense, a library can either be a data collection or the building in which the collection is stored. What makes the difference between a library data collection and a random pile of data is that library collections are generally curated for a specific purpose.”

Eight-One frowned at the unfamiliar word but didn’t want to interrupt. Madame Nu seemed to catch his confusion anyway. She paused for a second before tsking. “My apologies, I’m too used to using subject-specific terminology. I’ll try to remember to define terms as I go, but if I forget, throw something at me.”

Um _no_ he was not going to _throw things_ at a Jedi! Not that there was anything in the room to throw except the beanbags, anyway. 

Madame Nu snorted softly at their aghast expressions and continued with a smile. “‘Curated’ means that something is carefully chosen and thoughtfully organized or presented, usually by an expert. So the things in library collections are picked by an expert to present a clear and robust body of knowledge on a subject, whether that subject is hyperspace travel or Rhodian opera. One of the roles of a librarian—someone who works in a library—is often to work as a curator of one or more library collections.”

“So there are subsets of data in a library,” Eight-Five said, his tone making it into a careful statement instead of a question.

Madame Nu nodded. “It does depend on the size of the library, but it is extremely common. Here in the Archives, we might refer to ‘the collection’, meaning all the data contained in the building and databanks, or we could talk about a specific sub-set, such as the education collection or the music collection. Collections or holdings are usually organized according to subject, with further internal organization dependent on the subject itself. For instance, the astronavigation section is ordered by geography, whereas the culture section is alphabetical. Most collections are organized along those general lines, but there are some that follow other logic.” She paused a moment in thought. “For instance, I believe the cookbooks in the Mandalorian history section are ranked from bland to spicy.”

There was a section on _Mandalorian history?_ Storms, he wanted to see that!

“How many sub-collections are in the Archives?” Eight-One asked. What _else_ was waiting to be discovered?

“The Archive holdings are divided into over a hundred broad categories. I believe the current number of subcategories is well upwards of twelve thousand.”

That was _amazing_. The need to go explore _everything_ in the Archives itched down his spine.

“How do you _find_ anything in that?” Three-Five blurted. Eight-One only half heard him, too busy speculating about what might be contained in the hyperspace glow of the Archive shelves. 

Madame Nu’s slight smile picked up a bit of a smirk, as if at a private joke. “You ask a librarian.”

Eight-One dragged his attention back to his immediate surroundings. This sounded pertinent to their new assignment, and he also wanted in on whatever joke Madame Nu was thinking of.

Her smile broadened at their quizzical looks. “Librarians are trained not only to curate a collection, but also to navigate it. Part of your training will be becoming familiar with the Archive holdings—“ Eight-One did _not_ wriggle in glee at the implicit sanction to plunge into the Archive holdings, even though he wanted to, “—so that you know what and where they are and can direct Archive patrons to the information they are seeking. Fortunately, we don’t need to know _what_ every single piece of data in the Archives _is_ —we just need to know where it might be stored.”

“So how do you learn that?” Eight-Five asked, an intent look on his face.

“It begins with rote memorization, unfortunately,” Madame Nu said ruefully. _Psh,_ memorization was easy, that didn’t bother Eight-One at all. “You have to have a bit of an idea where things _might be_ before you can really begin to understand how to narrow down where they actually _are_. But we have the Archives catalog—an electronic list of everything in the holdings—to help with that. Truly, you can begin directing beings to what they need as long as you have access to the catalog and some idea about the information they want. The tricky part, and what much of your training will focus on, is asking the questions necessary to get to the heart of what patrons _actually_ want as opposed to what they _think_ they want.”

“Why is that hard?” Eight-One was confused. If someone came to a librarian for help with finding information, didn’t they already know what they wanted to find?

Madame Nu pulled a face at that. “Allow me to demonstrate,” she said, standing up and moving to the wall by the door. She touched a panel and the walls—which were apparently floor-to-ceiling touch screens, _that was amazing—_ lit up. Madame Nu walked to the wall directly behind her beanbag, everyone twisting in their seats to see. She keyed in something, fingers moving with rapid ease, and a block of text appeared on the wallscreen. 

“This is the home page of the Archives intranet and catalog. It is the starting point for almost every search for information within the Archives. To begin your search, you tap here—” an entry field on the page lit up, “—and enter your search terms. So. What do you want to search for?”

She looked at him expectantly. Eight-One tried to think of what he had been fantasizing about learning just moments before, but it seemed like every thought he’d ever had in his entire life had immediately disappeared. Okay, yeah, he got why it might be hard to figure out what you wanted to find in the Archives. 

“Can we look for something about Shili? That’s where General Ti is from, right?” Seven-Oh asked, thankfully saving Eight-One from his malfunctioning brain. There was the briefest flicker of some darker emotion over Madame Nu’s face at the mention of General Ti that Eight-One wondered about, but it was gone too quickly for him to parse.

“Certainly. Thank you, Seven-Oh,” she said courteously, and typed it into the box. The text on the page changed. Madame spread it across all the screens on every wall with a flick of her fingers. “These are all the catalog entries we have in the Archives that have something to do with Shili.”

That was...a lot. The list of results covered every bit of the wallscreens in tiny text. There was no way anyone would be able to look through all of those in a reasonable amount of time, even if they wanted to. 

“As you can see, this is an overwhelming amount of data, and therefore it is nearly as useless to us as if we didn’t have any at all. Often patrons will come to a librarian for help with exactly that broad of a query, and it falls to the librarian to help them narrow down what they are _actually_ looking for. So, Seven-Oh, what _specifically_ would you like to learn about Shili?”

With a few more quick questions, Madame Nu ascertained that what Seven-Oh wanted to know was general information on Shili’s native sentient species. She redid the search and displayed the results again, but this time it was only a short list that covered perhaps an arm’s length of the screen instead of the whole room. 

Eight-One was enthralled. It had taken Madame Nu four questions and less than two minutes to transform an overwhelmingly chaotic mess into something perfectly suited to answer their needs. No targeting program could have been more precise.

She turned to face the squad. “As you saw, all the data in the galaxy is useless if we don’t know how to find it and use it. As librarians, we serve as guides for others in the search for information, and it is _crucial_ to know how to ask the necessary questions in pursuit of the answers we seek.”

“General Ti said that’s why you asked for us to be sent here,” Oh-Nine said quietly, speaking up for the first time. “Because we ask questions.”

“Yes,” Madame said simply. “Asking questions and searching for answers is at the heart of a librarian’s purpose.”

Of all the things he had seen and heard since coming to the Temple, all the things that were different from Kamino, this might be the best: the assurance that everything about him that had been troublesome and unwanted there was valued—was _essential—_ here in the Archives. On Kamino, asking questions had been a literal death sentence for him. But here, Madame _wanted_ to teach them how to wield questions like a scalpel and cut cleanly through the chaos to the heart of things. 

Eight-One was so, so thankful that Madame had taken him from Kamino. 

*****

After more discussion about what a librarian was and what duties her new trainees were likely to have—shelving, circulation, reference, and research, to begin with—Jo retrieved the hovercarts she had prepared the day before. They held a wide sampling of the types of materials contained in the Archives. She had tried to pick from areas that would be of interest to her trainees, though she felt her success was mixed at best. She simply didn't know them well enough to judge what subjects might catch their fancies. In the end, she had chosen a few martially-inclined things and pulled from her favorites for the rest. 

There were several of the standard holopads that made up the bulk of the stacks, loaded with books about various species of carnivorous Mid-Rim flora; those were always a good bet with the younglings, and though the men appeared to be around the age of a senior padawan—perhaps eighteen standard, at the oldest—she imagined that the morbid fascination engendered by plants that could eat them would be the same. 

A pile of various datacards and datacrystals and their associated readers were taken from the galactic history collection, with a focus on famous military figures; there were some sheets of newsflimsi from the periodicals collection, and a classic holovid reel ( _Dread Pirate Cuthbert_ was extremely famous but also _extremely ridiculous._ She regretted that she enjoyed it, in spite of her better judgement).

The material-locked special display datapads from the art collection held her favorite series about stained glass. Some of the palm-sized star chart holoprojectors from the astronav section, three with charts for various galactic sectors and two with hyperlane maps, filled out the materials taken from the general Archives. 

Jo had decided not to include things from the special collections—those required delicate handling, and it would be unlikely that the men would be called on to deal with anything stored in the vaults. She had, however, brought one of her own real paper books for them to examine. Not many beings in the galaxy had experience with bound books, but she wanted her proto-librarians to know how to handle them. 

(She had considered including the lightsaber rifle as well, but it was technically on display right now, and if Plo got wind of it he would tease her mercilessly. She was currently ahead in their little competition and had no wish to give him any more ammunition than he currently had. It was hardly fair—he was out in the field far more often these days, and so had far fewer witnesses to report back to her about his more nonsensical actions. Whereas she was in the Temple and thus had to avoid the notice of the well-oiled gossip mill. Fortunately, she was an old hand at discretion.)

“Gentlemen,” she said, collecting the attention of her trainees, not that it had wandered far, “this is a decent sampling of some of the materials and data formats you will find in the Archives. Please take some time to familiarize yourselves with them. I believe everything is labeled with a brief bit of information—what it’s for, what it’s called, sometimes where it is stored—but let me know if you have any immediate questions. We will be discussing everything in depth after you have looked it over.”

The men hesitated a moment before moving toward the hovercarts. They always hesitated, she thought sadly. Always had to check to make sure she really meant what she said, to assess the situation for a hidden catch or a threat. She couldn’t blame them, even knowing as little of their previous situation as she did, but she still hurt for them. She hoped—prayed—that they would lose that wariness as they became more comfortable in their new life, but for now all she could do was be patient and let time and experience wear down their fear like water on a riverstone.

Fortunately, their hesitation quickly melted away as they became absorbed in their explorations. As Jo had expected, given her previous interactions with them, Seven-Oh and Three-Five were both as curious as a litter of loth-kittens. To her relief, the other three were equally as interested in the objects before them. 

When Jo had heard about the Kaminoans ‘decommissioning’ clones, she had asked Shaak to send her men who were in immediate danger, and Shaak had; Shaak had also told her about the confessions she had overheard while leaving Kamino, that the first thing her charges had told each other were the things that had gotten them sent to decommissioning, and what each of them had said. It was utterly heartbreaking.

Jo would not have turned away any of the men sent to her; the very idea was repugnant. But there had been no guarantee that any of the men who needed a safe haven would be a good fit for the jobs she had arranged for them.

But the Force had provided, as it always did. Every one of the men radiated fascination, wonder, and curiosity as they explored. Watching them, Jo felt her resolution from yesterday gain even more strength and settle deep into her ribs. These young men were precious. She would do all that she could to nurture and protect them. 

*****

Oh-Nine dragged into their quarters, following his new squadmates. The morning had been mentally vigorous, filled with learning about their assignment parameters, but the afternoon had been given over to the battlemaster and he had run them all into the ground with speed drills. He’d run Oh-Nine harder than any of them, so Oh-Nine was equally tired despite the conditioning he was accustomed to as a former marine-to-be. 

Oh-Nine thought it was kind of stupid—they were in the center of the galaxy, they were in the _Jedi Temple,_ there was very little likelihood that the war would come this far, and yet they were still being run like they were grunts back on Kamino. Master Drallig had said it was because they needed to be able to keep up with Madame Nu when she took them into the field, and they weren’t able to keep up yet. Madame Nu was...surprising. She surprised him a _lot,_ honestly, but despite everything she had done Oh-Nine still couldn’t quite believe that five men engineered to be soldiers from the time they were gametes wouldn’t be able to keep up with a single middle aged Human lady. 

But Master Drallig had certainly seemed to think so, so he had worked them as hard as ever The Marine had, and the only reason Oh-Nine didn't want to dump Master Drallig's body in the nearest ocean (did Coruscant even have oceans?) was that he had run the drills right alongside the squad the whole time. 

They had all showered after that, and managed to shovel down latemeal despite their exhaustion, so all that was left was to debrief and then collapse into bed. _Did they really need to debrief?_ Oh-Nine wondered as he changed into his sleeping clothes. They were all tired. They all wanted to sleep. But...it was a comfort, to talk things over with the others. It was reassuring to hear their thoughts about the day, to pool their observations and see what matched up between them and what he had missed or seen that the others hadn’t. It helped him feel grounded, more sure of his surroundings in this new and bewildering place. 

And, he thought as he made his way to the couch and watched his new squadmates trickle into the room, it was just a bit of a thrill to do something because they _wanted_ to instead of because it was required. At times he was unsettled by the lack of rigid structure in this new life, but this bit of freedom to choose felt heady. 

Seven-Oh had selected Three-Five to be his stuffed tooka tonight, possibly out of a desire to avoid becoming one with the couch cushions again. Seven-Oh was definitely the most tactile of the new squad. Three-Five and Eight-Five were easy with physical affection, though they didn’t seek it out with the same verve as Seven-Oh. Eight-One, on the other hand, always looked faintly confused when someone threw an arm around him. It made Oh-Nine wonder what Eight-One’s old squad was like, if he was that surprised by what Oh-Nine considered normal behavior between vode. 

“D’you really think we’re going to see combat?” Seven-Oh asked the room at large when everyone was settled. 

Three-Five shrugged as well as he could with Seven-Oh wrapped around him. “Master Drallig sure seems to think so.”

“I’ve never been in a real fight,” Eight-One admitted quietly. “I didn’t get scrambled for Geonosis.”

“Me neither,” Eight-Five said, and the rest of them did the same.

“What's fighting with a Jedi going to be like?” Seven-Oh wondered aloud. 

Eight-Five snorted. “I dare not even guess at this point. Every time I think I know what the Jedi are like, they prove me wrong. They’re _nothing_ like the Kaminiise said they would be.”

Wasn’t that the truth. Oh-Nine had heard over and over that the Jedi were cold, arrogant beings, far more concerned with their mystical powers than the feelings and opinions of a mere clone. It had been made very clear to him that the Jedi would _always_ expect obedience from the soldiers they had bought and paid for, and they wouldn't tolerate anything less.

As far as Oh-Nine could tell, that was false on every point. He hadn't met very many of them, so he supposed he couldn't say _for sure_ that the Kaminiise had been wrong about the entire Jedi Order, but the Jedi he _had_ met were warm, friendly, and cared a lot more about his wellbeing than any natborn ever had before. What mystical powers they had were used to heal pinpricks that barely stung.

As for expecting obedience—he was beginning to think that the Kaminiise and the Jedi defined 'obedience' _very_ differently. But then again, it had only been a few days, and it wasn't like he or his new squadmates had tried to step out of line yet, so he didn't really know what would happen if they did. Given... _everything_ so far, whatever way the Jedi responded to disobedience was unlikely to be the same as on Kamino—but that meant he couldn’t predict what it would be, and that was deeply unsettling. 

He supposed only time would tell.

“I heard once that Jedi can fly,” Three-Five mused idly. “Maybe that’s why Master Drallig thought we couldn’t keep up with Madame in the field.”

Eight-Five scoffed. “What would be the point of all the speed drills then? Us getting faster isn’t going to make us able to _fly.”_

“Jetpacks are a thing that exists!” Three-Five protested, starting to grin.

“Yeah but that still doesn’t explain why we need to be speedy!”

Oh-Nine thought about pointing out that if they didn’t even have armor they were unlikely to get jetpacks, but it was clear that the other two were enjoying their spat, and he didn’t want to break up the good mood with a dose of reality. Better to savor the happy moments while they could. So he leaned back, got comfortable, and let the familiar, soothing sounds of a brotherly squabble wash over him.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Daily Divinations](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29286015) by [Papook](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Papook/pseuds/Papook)




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